A Day Trip

Hello!
It has been a week since I have updated the blog. I'm not sure where the time is going!
I have been very busy with all of my volunteer work....that I will update about tomorrow.
For today....I would like to write about a day trip that we went on this past Saturday.

Since we had another volunteer visiting from Canada, we decided to head out and do a little sight seeing. Kakamega is a town not too far away from us and very close to the town is Kakamega Forest Reserve. The forest reserve is the last remaining tropical rain forest in Kenya. Way back in the day, this type of forest covered a much larger part of Kenya....






until the British cleared a large portion of the forest for tea plantations. This is me giving Rachel...the volunteer from Wales a scolding about the field of tea behind me.


Let me back up a second and start from the beginning of our day. It was quite the journey to get there! We left early in the morning, we even had to get up before the sun came up to get ready in time. I know that might sound funny as most people do get up before the sun, but without electricity, getting up before the sun is a much bigger deal than you might think! We took a moterbike to the main road, hopped on a crowded matatu and were on our way. When we got to Kakamega town, we had some trouble finding the next matatu, so we decided just to hire a moterbike to take us right from the town to the forest reserve. How far could it really be?!?!?! Let me tell you...it was quite the ride. I'm not sure if I should share too many details, cause Mom already knows we don't use helmets on the bikes...... It was a long ride and our drivers were going WAY too fast. By the time we got to the site, we each had a visible layer of dirt and dust all over. We basically looked like a huge spray on tan job gone wrong.






Due to our early start, we actually did make pretty good time getting to the forest so we were able to go for a longer hike. We hired a guide (apparently it is pretty hard to find your way without one) for a 3-5 hour hike through the forest and up a hill above the forest.

Here I am, about halfway up the hill.









Here we are making it to the top. It wasn't exactly a difficult hike, but it did afford a pretty nice view at the top.

Luckily we had purchased some mangoes in town before heading to the forest so we has a fantastic snack at the top.





On our way down, at one point our guide quite calmly told me to come to one side of the path. I didn't quite know what was going on, but I complied. After we had passed a small section she told us that there was a cobra right beside us!! She didn't tell us until after it has left, because she didn't want to scare us or more importantly the snake. I sure wish I'd had a photo....or at least seen it!


In terms of wildlife, the forest used to be home to gorillas among many other things...but they have long since died off. There are still lots of smaller monkey, birds and insects. We were pretty excited about the monkeys....I think I have approximately eighteen million pictures of monkey now. I will share with you only a few.

This one isn't the greatest photo, but you can see the baby monkey on the mother's back!





These guys are just hanging out, picking a few bugs off each other. Nearby we did see some monkey fighting....but I wasn't able to get a clear photo.






I like this guy on the left's stance, he's just hanging out, relaxing.














We went a little crazy with the monkey shots....last one.












And lastly....this might have been the best part of the day.... We went back into town and had a cold beer on a patio before heading home.